Six Critical Leadership Activities: Enabling

The following list identifies six activities that I consider “critical” to successful leadership. These activities have helped me become and remain a more effective and efficient leader here at Remote DBA Experts.

1. Strategize
2. Align
3. Energize
4. Enable
5. Actualize
6. Recognize

In my last post, I defined what I meant by Energizing and described what it entails.  In this post, I will do the same with the next Critical Leadership Activity:  Enabling.  If you’ve been keeping up with this blog series, I have mentioned that Energizing and Enabling were activities I used to give better meaning to the process of getting the most out of people.

What does Enabling mean?

To get the most out of people once they are energized, leaders must enable them.  Enabling means to give them what is necessary to accomplish the aim(s) sought.  However, this is a critical activity that is sometimes ignored. Often we get people energized and ready to do whatever it takes, yet we fail to give them the resources, capabilities, or power to accomplish.    Nothing can deter accomplishment more than “un-enabled” people.

What does Enabling entail?

Enabling entails multiple aspects that leaders must keep in mind and carefully manage at multiple levels.  The following list includes the key enabling aspects that leaders should keep in mind:

• Clarity
• Culture
• Resources
• Support
• Capabilities

Clarity means setting clear direction.  It involves people understanding a number of things including:

• aims and strategies
• purposes and rationales
• work and information flows
• accountability processes, expectations, and consequences
• power and organization structure and limits of authority
• etc.

When individuals understand the above items they are enabled to move towards accomplishment with much more ease.

Culture means the environment under which accomplishment is to be attained.  It involves setting work environment conditions that enable people within it to perform their roles and missions with ease and that leads them to accomplish aim(s).  It includes the following aspects:

• incentives and rewards
• cooperation and collaboration
• empowerment
• openness
• etc.

Resources mean the time, people and money necessary to get the job done.  Giving people something to accomplish and expecting them to do it with the same level of resources is a recipe for failure.  Leaders sometimes set themselves up for failure when they pile new aims and expectations on top of existing ones without providing either new resources or the ability to reapply existing ones.    Leaders also need to enable others to become more resourceful about resources.  What that means is that while resources can be critical, a resourceful mindset can overcome lack of resources.  That means enabling and encouraging creativity in your people.  Lack of resources is a great excuse.  Great accomplishments are more likely to come from resourceful individuals than from resource-full ones.  Make people think more creatively when they tell you they do not have enough time, money, and/or people to get the job done.

Support refers to moral support more than anything.  Other support is covered within the aforementioned resources area.   Moral support is a key enabler.  Attentive listening and responding is a huge enabler.  When people feel supported or feel you’ve got their back, they feel enabled.   You need to stand behind them and show them privately and publicly that you support them.

Capabilities mean anything that makes an individual or team more capable of accomplishing their aim, mission, role, etc. It includes the following categories:

• tools
• systems
• processes
• procedures
• methods

You could argue that these are resources, but I decided to treat them separately.  In this day and age, capabilities are critical to enable accomplishment.  The most capable people have access to good capabilities.

Enabling is essential to accomplishment.  Leaders must pay close attention to this activity if they want to get the most and best out of their teams and team members.   If we want to accomplish our aims in the most efficient and effective manner possible, our job as leaders is to remove as many constraints and obstacle as we can and provide as many enablers as possible,

Are you and your team fully enabled?

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO